Startup Systems

The median bootstrapped B2B SaaS company currently spends around 90% of its annual recurring revenue on costs—25% on go-to-market strategy and execution, 24% on research and development, 15% on administrative and miscellaneous expenses, 13% on website hosting and implementation, and 10% on customer retention. Each of these categories of cost is now... See more

The result is a meta-market: because founders know what playbook their competition is running, they end up positioning themselves against moves their competitors will make in three years. Let’s say I run a newsletter software company, similar to Substack or Beehiiv. Since each company has a unique starting point, we’ll each have relative strengths.... See more

Raising money is never an accomplishment in and of itself —it just raises the stakes for all the hard work you would have had to do anyway: actually building your business.

Some signs of cultural corrosion caused by raising too much money:

• Hiring too many people—slows everything down and makes it much harder for you to react and change. You are almos

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Most owners consider themselves product creators and not actual business owners.

There are endless tasks to be done in starting a new venture. But most of the tasks are necessary but insufficient. You can’t begin without them, but by themselves, they won’t create enough impact for your work to make a change happen.

And every new project must create change, or else it fails.

We spend our time focusing on the tasks because the task... See more

Conventional hiring processes are designed to recruit the most skilled people to fill a specific role at the right price. The experience can feel dehumanizing — it’s laden with unwritten rules, negotiation, posturing, and indirect communication (if you’re lucky) through recruiters.

The process, at its core, is a transaction of resources. It’s not fi... See more

According to self-determination theory, humans have three basic needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. One reason why nudges toward change often backfire is that they can feel like a violation of autonomy, leading someone to do the opposite as a way to regain a sense of freedom.

As a result, well-intended feedback can actually reinforce the b... See more

A difference in emphasis: raising the floor versus raising the ceiling

Matt Clifford has written about how building a world-changing technology company has never been easier than it is today. But for all of the technical, commercial, and industry-specific knowledge that founders can readily access, psychological knowledge still lags behind. (In fac... See more

We try to be as rigorous and data-driven as possible in quarterly planning. All objectives are measurable, either in terms of quantifiable thresholds or Boolean “was X completed or not.” Our objectives are very aggressive, and often at the end of the quarter we only end up completing 70% in one direction or another. The remaining 30% helps identify... See more